


And then I can tell myself not to ride along with you

by Elisexyz



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Drinking & Talking, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Marvey can be seen either as bromance on slash, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 20:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12872358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: “Mike. What are you doing here?”Six years of silence, yet Harvey’s knee-jerk reaction to having Mike Ross show up unannounced at his door hasn’t changed. The same can’t be said for many other things.





	And then I can tell myself not to ride along with you

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I have spent _ages_ trying to get down one of my Marvey ideas for a fic, but I couldn’t get more than like 500 words in before I was blocked. Than I came up with this and I wrote it all down at once. Okay, brain, that makes sense.  
>  Well, this was obviously inspired by the articles about Mike and Rachel both leaving the show. Of course I couldn’t waste an opportunity like that to jump on the angst train, could I?  
>  As 99% of the time in my fics, I haven’t been TOO explicit about the nature of Mike and Harvey’s relationship, so you can see it as you prefer.  
>  The title is from the song [_The night we met_ by Lord Huron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQh9eDcS1-0), which I think goes pretty nicely with the theme of the fic. You can find me on Tumblr as [heytheredeann](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com): I ramble, fangirl, gif stuff and ramble some more. Enjoy! 

 

“Mike. What are you doing here?”

The question slips from his lips as easily as it would have six years ago, even if now the image of Mike on his doorstep probably warrants for more than a simple curiosity about what he’s doing there at 10 pm.

Mike looks different. He’s let his beard grow a little, and, much to Harvey’s surprise, it’s actually kept clean and in order. His hair has grown a little too, since the last time he saw him.

“Can I come in?” Mike asks. There’s an hesitation in his voice that Harvey isn’t used to hearing anymore: Mike knew that Harvey’s door was open, always would be, but right now, after all that time, it feels like he’s supposed to have lost that privilege. Six years. It’s a long time. Yet, Harvey steps aside.

“Sure,” he says. He takes some time to watch Mike’s back, to notice how he’s worked out and his clothes still aren’t as expensive as Harvey would have hoped. He also notices his careful steps, as if he was entering unknown territory. It’s a shining alarm, yelling about how much has changed.

“You made a few changes,” Mike comments, gesturing briefly at the couch and the armchairs. He doesn’t turn to look at Harvey’s face.

“It’s been a long time,” he replies. It’s sharp, but probably not as much as he would have guessed if he had been asked how he would react to seeing Mike again. Harvey still remembers it, the anger, the betrayal, it’s still burning somewhere in his chest. Still, as soon as he laid eyes on Mike it evaporated, leaving him with a distant ache in his chest at the sight of a ghost and the undying, foolish hope that this means that he’s getting him back.

“Guess I deserve that,” Mike comments, quietly. He sits on the couch, looking unsure about what to do with his hands, where to place his eyes. There’s something wrong with them, there’s an emptiness that Harvey doesn’t like to see.

Harvey sighs. He needs a drink.

It takes a conscious effort to take out two glasses, because by now he’s way too used to drinking on his own.

“Is Scotch okay?” he asks. He knows it is, but there’s a heavy silence between them – this empty space separating them lacks understanding, a closeness that even at their worst they always shared – and Mike isn’t filling it.

“Sure,” he says. _Well, kid, at least give me a hand here_.

Harvey fills two glasses and brings them to the coffee table, but he does go back for the bottle. He gets the feeling he’ll need it.

Mike takes a slow sip from his glass and an earnest smile breaks through his face. “I did miss your Scotch,” he says.

“What, no drinks in…?”

He lets his voice trail off, waiting for Mike to answer his implicit question: _where the hell have you been?_

Mike’s eyes fall once again.

“Yeah, no, I- I travelled. A lot,” he explains.

“And you didn’t drink,” Harvey supplies. It’s a game, one he usually wouldn’t play. He knows what Mike meant, they always used to admit to needing and missing each other in this implicit way. Key-word there is ‘used to’. He wants Mike to say it.

“You know what I meant,” Mike replies, gently. He even offers a smile.

“It’d still be nice if you said it,” Harvey states. Because God knows how much he missed Mike during those years. And unlike him, Harvey didn’t have a choice in this new arrangement.

“Okay,” Mike sighs. “I missed _you_.”

“Answer to that was easy: you could have come back.”

Mike’s eyes trail off again, away from Harvey, inspecting the place as if to look for other differences in the furniture, besides the couch and armchairs. There are a few: new decorations that he put up on the wall, chairs that have been replaced. Because six years are such a long time.

“I know,” Mike says, his voice thin. “I just needed a little time.”

“I could have _helped_ you,” Harvey says, vehemently. “I _wanted_ to.”

Mike’s eyes are on him again, and Harvey almost wishes they weren’t, because they are not empty or distant anymore: they are filled with a fondness that Harvey doesn’t really need to see right now.

“I know, Harvey, I do, but-” He pauses, taking a deep breath. Thank God his eyes fall on the ground for a couple of seconds. “I needed to be away. After Rachel-” Mike stops, trying to bring himself to form the words. Eventually, he gives up. “I needed to go.”

“You didn’t have to go back to work,” Harvey says. He remembers countless voicemails left on Mike’s phone, and he knows that he’s said this before, but he’s not even sure that Mike ever listened to those messages. “You could have just hidden here. Or, fine, if you needed to just go away I would have understood, but you could have _called_. Or texted. You could have given me _something_.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says. Harvey doesn’t really know what to do with that. It’s been six years. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t undo a thing. Harvey wonders if Mike showing up at his door didn’t just make things worse, but it lasts for a second: as pathetic as it sounds, he’s never really stopped waiting for a call from him. You can’t reopen a wound that never stopped bleeding in the first place.

“Why didn’t you?” Harvey insists.

“I don’t know,” Mike says, quietly. “I just- At first, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. And then it just- picking up the phone got a hell of a lot more difficult the more time passed.”

“So what, it was cowardice?” Harvey asks, raising his eyebrows. Two glasses of Scotch are already down and he barely noticed. He really hopes that Mike is not there just to tell him that he didn’t call because he was ashamed that he had run away in the first place, or he was going to kick his ass up and down the apartment.

“Maybe, I don’t know,” Mike mumbles. He pauses. “I met a woman,” he adds.

Harvey blinks. Figures. “So _that’s_ why you disappeared,” he comments, bitterly. Oh well, that explains things. A _woman_.

“No, I- Yes, I made a new life and I just-”

“Forgot about your old one,” Harvey completes. And here it is, the anger that was set aside as soon as he laid eyes on Mike, back at full force. “About the guy who _gave_ you that life in the first place and apparently wasn’t even worth a call anymore.”

“Harvey, it’s not like that-”

“You _left_ me,” Harvey interrupts. “We were _family_ , and you went ahead and made another one without as much of a goodbye.”

“It was an accident,” Mike tries to explain. Harvey doesn’t really want to hear it anymore. He’s not sure what he expected when he let him in, because anything short of ‘I was in a coma for six years’ probably wouldn’t make the feeling of anger and betrayal go away. Maybe, if Mike was there to stay, if he came back like a prodigal son and swore to never leave his side again- but no, Mike met a ‘woman’, Mike has a family by now, and he’s not coming back.

“You _left_ me,” Harvey repeats. There’s less anger now. He’s tired.

“I’m sorry,” Mike offers, again. It’s no better than the first time he apologized. “Harvey, I didn’t _want_ to leave you.”

“What, was someone pointing a gun to your head?” Harvey suggests. He chuckles, in spite of himself. He remembers talks about strategy, about coping under pressure and looking for the third way when faced with a gun. Six years without a right hand, and he still remembers the feeling so well.

“No, I just- had to,” Mike says.

“Had to,” Harvey says, nodding. It’s sharp and sarcastic. “Sure.”

Mike sighs. He puts the half-full glass of Scotch back on the table and he rubs his face with both hands. “I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry,” he says. “And I wanted to know- how you are doing.”

“That could have been accomplished by calling me a couple of times in _six years_ ,” Harvey replies. Mike’s eyes fall. There’s no feeling of victory, satisfaction, or superiority. Just the feeling of an emotional punch laid by force of obligation towards an anger that he doesn’t know how to let go of. “And I am _fine_ , thanks.”

“You don’t look too good.”

“That’s because I’m not getting any younger, smartass.”

Mike smirks slightly, and it’s almost all back to normal. At least, until the shadow of the years that passed doesn’t fall on Mike’s face again. Harvey can still recognize the sharp edges that he inherited from prison, he still sees the ghost of the kid he used to be in that smirk, but there’s so much unknown history behind his expression, and Harvey used to be able to read it way more accurately than this.

“Why did you come here?” Harvey asks.

Mike’s serious again. He sighs. “I thought you might want to- come with me.”

Harvey blinks. “Where to?”

Mike shrugs. “To meet my girlfriend. To- I thought- We could be together.”

“Rich from the guy who disappeared on me,” Harvey mumbles. “Why would I come?”

“I kinda hoped that you missed me too,” Mike confesses. He attempts a slight smile.

“I did,” Harvey lets slip, because at this point he doesn’t really care that much about appearances. “But you walked out on me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Mike says. Harvey wants to ask how the _hell_ he could not realize that he hadn’t called him in ages, when Harvey, at least in the beginning, couldn’t go an hour without checking his phone. But after all, it’s always been easier for people to leave him than it is for him to give up on them. “And I’m here to make it up to you.”

Harvey sighs. “Okay,” he says. “We can discuss this tomorrow.” It’s not like there’s much that Mike can say that would make his long absence any better now, is there? “Are you up for a movie?” The only thing Harvey can think of doing is grabbing that little shred of normalcy that he’s been given and not letting it go for as long as possible. Many times he's imagined Mike coming back and things going back to what they used to be, it’s not going to be a problem to pretend for a while. If Mike lets him.

“Does this mean that you’ll come with me?” Mike insists. There’s a hopeful smile on his face.

“Maybe,” Harvey says. “Not tonight, though.”

Mike nods. His smile is soft, it reminds Harvey of when he used to be innocent. “Movie it is then.”

They settle on the couch together, knee to knee, as if a day hadn’t passed. Harvey is pleased to find that, while much has changed, their ability to move in perfect sync around each other hasn’t disappeared. It’s something.

“You know, I missed your movie quotes too,” Mike says, after the movie has started. They don’t look at each other. In Harvey’s head, Mike’s half a decade younger and clean-shaven.

“I missed someone catching all my references,” he offers.

Mike chuckles, shifting a bit closer, and Harvey wonders if tomorrow, when he’ll open his eyes to find Mike by his side, it’ll be like he never left at all.

 

 

Donna inhales, holding the air into her lungs for about five seconds before letting it go slowly. She puts on the most natural smile that she can manage before turning the key in the lock and letting herself in.

The first thing she does is scanning the living room to make sure that it’s not one of those days in which she’ll have to collect him from the floor. It’s not, fortunately: Harvey is sitting on the couch, leaning towards his right as he sleeps soundly.

He seems at peace, and the slight smile on her lips is real this time.

She collects the bottle of Scotch he left on the coffee table and the two glasses – aren’t _two_ a bit of an exageration anyway? -, one still full, and as she puts them in the sink she wonders if she should wake him up and bring him to bed.

He seems calm, peaceful, and she doesn’t think she’s kidding herself when she notices the ghost of a smile on his face. A part of her finds it extremely ironic that Harvey chose _this_ out of all nights to sleep peacefully. In her eyes there’s still the image of Louis, Jessica, Gretchen and Katrina sitting with her at a table and trying to keep it together between toasts and fond stories of Mike and Rachel, and she resents that Harvey wasn’t _there_ with them, that he wasn’t sharing their suffering and sadness for what they lost exactly six years ago.

But it’s just a second, because she’s watched him spiralling out of control all these years, keeping it together only because he’s caught in a delusion, hanging onto the hope that Mike will be back for him, someday, and she’d much rather suffer the death of their friends than be unable to accept the reality.

She decides to let him sleep, in the end. She turns the TV off and she heads for the bed, trying to be selflessly glad that he’s getting a moment of peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little final note on Donna being at Harvey’s apartment: it can be seen as you prefer, as platonic sharing the house or them being together. Personally, I don’t like Darvey and I feel like Harvey has been portrayed as really not interested, but I do think that it’d be entirely possible for Harvey to let Donna in if he received an emotional blow such as Mike “leaving” (dying, in this case, but still), therefore, in my head, that is a romantic relationship. One that sees Donna doing most of the work and Harvey using it more as an emotional crutch than anything else, but still. 


End file.
